NATIONAL CITY BEGINS TO TACKLE AFFORDABLE HOUSING ISSUE

Affordable housing conundrum arises

NATIONAL CITY 
National City faces some of the toughest challenges in San Diego County as it begins work to provide nearly 2,000 affordable-housing units between now and 2020.

California has determined the affordable housing production needs for the San Diego region, and SANDAG has allocated a share of that need to each city in the county. National City’s share is 1,863, meaning the city must identify sites to accommodate the need and facilitate the development of adequate housing while maintaining and improving the existing affordable homes.

Principal Planner Raymond Pe told Planning Commission members last week that while National City’s population grew more slowly than the county’s overall population, its median income level for a four-person household is also the lowest in the county.

The city’s median income for a four-person household was just under $42,000 in 2010, compared with the countywide median of $56,000.

Residents also struggle to find housing they can afford, he said. Over half of the city’s households overpaid for housing in 2011, meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing.

Renters were hit hardest when it came to housing costs. Sixty percent of renters overpaid, while 44 percent of owners overpaid. Two-thirds of National City residents are renters, while one-third are homeowners. That is the inverse of the countywide trend, where two-thirds of households are homeowners and one-third are renters.

About 18 percent of households in National City had more than one person per bedroom, qualifying them as “overcrowded.”

The city had just under 18,000 total housing units on Jan. 1, 2010, Pe said, and there’s not a lot of room to build new ones.

Meanwhile, the city’s existing homes are aging, with nearly four out of five homes 30 years old or more.

These are the challenges Pe and other city leaders face as they embark on an update of National City’s Housing Element, one of the seven required components to the city’s General Plan.

“It’s intended to achieve the state’s goal of ensuring decent housing and a suitable living environment for every Californian,” Pe told the commissioners.

He said that while there is not much land remaining to develop, and the city can’t lower land costs, it can overcome that challenge by allowing higher-density developments in certain areas, which can allow land costs to be spread over a greater number of units.

But even that could require significant upgrades to older infrastructure that may be inadequate for high-density development, Pe said.

“There are also physical constraints, such as topography, that might affect the developability of land.”

The downtown, western and mixed-use districts are the best candidates for new higher-density housing developments, he said.

Pe expects to have a draft Housing Element update ready in February, which will identify the existing housing stock and city resources that can be put toward reaching its goals. The Planning Commission will likely vote on the update in March or April, and send it to the City Council in April for final action.